Called to Serve

Allie & I still have the same clothes~ twining across the US of A

Happy Birthday America!!! I love the 4th of July so much! It was a great week. I wore red white and blue everyday to prepare for Independence day. It was wonderful! We had an awesome ward BBQ with delicious food and fun people to talk to. Then we spent the evening with some families in our ward eating and enjoying the blessings of living in the promised land! We are so blessed and fortunate to live in a land where we can enjoy freedom and peace. Especially freedom of religion- the restoration literally would not have been possible if we did not have freedom of religion in America! It was all part of the divine plan.

So yes, the fourth of July was wonderful. We live in such a patriotic community so there were flags and BBQs and block parties and everyone was just so happy to be an American! In other news, we got to meet our new mission president this week! He is a special man. At the end of our meeting with him, he gave his closing remarks and the spirit witnessed to me very strongly that this man is called of God to be our mission president at this time. He is quite different than our last mission president, but I think he is exactly what our mission needs at this time. At least he is what I need right now! He is a very genuine man who is really focused on helping us grow and become better missionaries by relying on the spirit. I am so excited to see how things will change in our mission and also how I will change as a missionary! It's really exciting.

We have continued trying our hardest to talk to as many people as we possibly can! We teach everyone we see and testify to them of the restored gospel. We talked to a man yesterday who thought he knew a lot about our church, but as we talked to him, we revealed things that he had misunderstood. It was funny because we taught him about the restoration, the priesthood and the Book of Mormon and then we offered him a copy of the Book of Mormon! But then he says "woah. I've learned so much already in our short conversation, I think I need to soak all this in before I take your book!" It made me chuckle. But we left him with our phone number for when he's ready to accept the book. I love talking to people! It's so interesting and I learn a lot about people. The people in our area are so friendly and very nice to us. We've been offered a lot of water and even though it's really hot, it's a blessing because people have sympathy on us! They are just polite, friendly people and I love them all!

We've also been focusing a lot on family history lately. We've been trying to talk to people more about their families and if they have done any of their genealogy. It's interesting how people are much more willing to talk to us about their family history. And we have invited many of them to come to our family history center to learn more! My companion and I were doing family history one day and turns out we are related! She was doing some research on some Utley's in her family line and I glanced over at her screen and saw the name! We went back and we have some of the same ancestors many generations ago. What a crazy connection! But I have had a lot of fun learning about my family history and my ancestors. I think this family history push is really a great way to get people introduced to the church and interested in the gospel.

Well, of course I am just loving it here. The people are great, the missionaries are great, our ward is great, and of course the gospel is WONDERFUL. It is the true church! And I could not be happier because of my knowledge of the truth. I hope you all have a fantastic week!

xoxo

Sister Hoer